How to set a small linespace even with a very big letter in the text

Question

I use a font (Aquiline), that has only a few characters, most notably the letter "A", which are quite huge in height.

I use LuaLaTex with the fontspec package.

So if I use this font and a capital A is in the line, the linespace is quite big compared to lines without that letter. It would be much nicer, if the linespace of the whole text would be the same. Preferrable even, if the line space would be like it is wihtout the presence of tha A and if this letter appears, it is no problem, if it intersects with the previous line.

But I have no Idea, how to achieve this.

Answer 1

If you do end up using Aquiline -- with each A replaced with \smash{A} per @barbarabeeton's recommendation -- your paragraphs will have evenly spaced baseline distances but you'll still have problem: The ascenders of the uppercase-A glyphs will pierce the preceding baselines, making for a rather difficult-to-read text. To keep this from happening, you should probably load the setspace package as well and set \setstretch{2}. With this setting, the uppercase-A glyphs may still tangle with the descenders of characters such as f and g but that shouldn't impair readability too much, I believe.

Instead of Aquiline, you could use the font AquilineTwo. It is very similar to Aquiline but doesn't have some the exaggerated-size ascenders (most notably, the uppercase A). As a result, you'll automatically get the evenly spaced baselines. Plus, you needn't adjust the baseline stretch further to avoid the problem of ascenders of some letters piercing the preceding baselines.